[IAEP] 90% fluency Re: Granny Cloud

[Yamandu Ploskonka]

hmm, sure..., sorry   What does it mean? 90% of the children get 100%?  
Is there a sliding scale / bell curve?  what is "fluency", anyway?  
fluency in what?

On 11/02/2010 05:08 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
> I didn't say "90% fluency", I said to "get 90% of the children to the 
> level of fluency".
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Yamandu Ploskonka <yamaplos at gmail.com>
> *To:* Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com>
> *Cc:* Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>; IAEP SugarLabs 
> <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; kksubbu.ml at gmail.com
> *Sent:* Tue, November 2, 2010 12:38:17 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] 90% fluency Re: Granny Cloud
>
> For the record, I actually did agree with the guy, and when given a 
> chance to present to that same group one week later, used this very 
> concept together with a picture I took in Nepal of an old gentleman, 
> as part of my talk (and I used Prezi, which was quite impressive... :-)
>
> OTOH, agreeing with such way of handling data has seriously messed up 
> with my compass for valid, evidence-based scientific data, which is 
> why my request to understand better what Alan meant by 90% fluency...
>
> On 11/02/2010 03:30 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote:
>> Hi All...
>>
>> A bit of family history to shed light on my opinion on this...
>>
>> My Irish great-grandmother was unable to read and write when her 
>> first children were born, back in the 1860's (she was born at the 
>> start of the Potato Famine).  She signed their birth certificates 
>> with an "X." Within a couple of years of that (probable 
>> embarrassment) she was able to sign her name.  By 1904, when the only 
>> photo I have seen of her was taken (just before she died), she posed 
>> with a book... a la Whistler's Mother. And I have a copy of a letter 
>> she wrote in the late 1890's. Being able to sign her name was the 
>> first step on her road to literacy. It can be the same for the folks 
>> in Bolivia, or anywhere else... regardless of their age.
>>
>> Caryl
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 15:12:36 -0500
>> From: yamaplos at gmail.com
>> To: alan.nemo at yahoo.com
>> CC: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org; kksubbu.ml at gmail.com
>> Subject: [IAEP] 90% fluency Re: Granny Cloud
>>
>> When I was in Bolivia recently I happened to be present at a rather 
>> high-level meeting where the matter of the literacy rate of Ecuador 
>> was being discussed, and criticism of those critisizing it got 
>> criticized - apparently UNICEF or one other such agency had disputed 
>> a 1% gain claimed by the government, who then had to retract its figures.
>>
>> The main point had to do with "the breach".  Apparently or so we were 
>> told, you can and should be able to count success in literacy even in 
>> cases that all you have been able to achieve with that 70-year-old 
>> peasant was to get him to recognize his name, or write it when 
>> prompted, and people who don't count that as a gain in absolute 
>> literacy figures for the country are plain evil imperialist 
>> capitalistic goons or their equivalent.
>>
>> In this context it surprises me less that many projects simply are 
>> not interested in cause-effect research, based in objective data, 
>> regarding OLPC or any of such. Qualitative research is in, as valid 
>> and acceptable, and so is perception-based data and interviews rather 
>> than actual event/fact observation, and technicalities are used to 
>> debunk data-based reports (this later actually might be fair, if they 
>> play by the rules).
>>
>> Because we do not have suitably globally agreed-on scales and 
>> answers, answers that are consistent at the same time with 
>> evidence-based research, political correctness, and respect for the 
>> downtrodden, we are a bit stuck when it comes to say if we are - 
>> where? - somewhere...
>>
>> As to myself, I will not dispute the claims by our President, Evo 
>> Morales, and his government, that we have, in Bolivia, achieved 100% 
>> literacy.  There are, so I've been told by some of the very people 
>> who have arrived to that number, solid reasons and evidence that 
>> shows such an excellent goal and need has been met.
>>
>> Now, y'all at PARC, do you have some definitions that clarify what it 
>> is they meant by 90% fluency?
>> They are crucial, no doubt...  is that like 10% less than 100%?
>>
>>
>>
>> As to drop making technology available for the top quartiles just 
>> because the low quartile is not getting any benefit, I have no words.
>>
>> It is very nice to want to close the breach, to want to help the 
>> least, but if the only way to more equality is by setting up a lower 
>> ceiling for those who actually could benefit at the least cost, then 
>> we are totally messed up, it certainly is NOT unimportant.
>>
>> A colleague in the Sur list was mentioning "residual cognitive 
>> benefits" in the form of new brain circuits.  When I think on how 
>> much more expensive it is to get a good education to a kid with low 
>> socioeconomics than it is to a better-off one, besides the whole 
>> issue of context I worry on how we do not realize the consequences, 
>> importance and additional cost to go that extra mile - and in doing 
>> so, refrain from discriminating against those who do not need all of 
>> that effort, those whose 2-parent households get hit by taxes and 
>> their own expenses as they do some of the push.  I know it gets silly 
>> very fast, but in real world terms, let us not pretend we are 
>> surprised by the higher XO breakage rates among urban poor kids in 
>> Uruguay, or the low breakage amongst the even poorer in Nepal, when 
>> we know that one of those pretends that equality happens by saying 
>> so, and the other carefully builds and together with the interested 
>> parties prepares for difficult scenarios.
>>
>> Alas,
>>
>> Yama
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/02/2010 10:51 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
>>
>>     To me, this is the main point.
>>
>>     Years ago (at PARC) we decided that in any meaningful world, we
>>     needed to help 90% of the learners achieve real fluency (or judge
>>     our methods to be not good enough). Both the "90%" and "real
>>     fluency" are crucial (the latter is often abandoned when the
>>     former is held to be important).
>>
>>     Cheers,
>>
>>     Alan
>>
>>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>     *From:* K. K. Subramaniam <kksubbu.ml at gmail.com>
>>     <mailto:kksubbu.ml at gmail.com>
>>     *To:* iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org <mailto:iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>>     *Sent:* Tue, November 2, 2010 7:45:47 AM
>>     *Subject:* Re: [IAEP] Granny Cloud
>>
>>     On Tuesday 02 Nov 2010 8:17:34 am Caryl Bigenho wrote:
>>     > Hi All...
>>     > Here is a concise article that summarizes Sugata Mitra's work
>>     with the
>>     > "Granny Cloud."  Note he says a 1 to 1 model doesn't work. He
>>     uses 4 to 1.
>>     > http://dnc.digitalunite.com/2010/07/29/granny-cloud-to-teach-children-via-
>>     > the-internet/
>>     I would be wary of reaching any specific conclusion from such
>>     experiments. This
>>     is not to discourage new experiments but to highlight the fact
>>     the need of the
>>     hours are interventions that ensures that the number of students
>>     who are *not
>>     learning* should provably *decrease* during a three year window.
>>
>>     When we throw technology X or method Y at the education problem
>>     and make the
>>     top two quartiles learn better but leave the bottom quartile out
>>     cold, then
>>     such a tech/method is a nice but unimportant development for
>>     tacking education
>>     issues we face today.
>>
>>     Subbu
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